Page 186 of Piece Us Together

“Um. Well. To be honest…we figured it was a fifty-fifty chance? We never wanted to ask.”

Hunter shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. It’s a rare showing of vulnerability. It leaves his brown locks mussed, like they look after he fucks me. I suppress a shiver, looking anywhere but at him. Matt chokes on a laugh, the asshole.

“That’s—okay, we’ll deal with that later. Does Carter truly speak to Maison like that?”

“I mean, I was being dramatic, but sort of. If there’s any chance to blame Maison, he jumps on it.” Bryce shrugs before continuing. “I try to respect everyone’s journey or whatever. I know he’s gotten better. It’s their fight to have. I think maybe I’m biased. I probably always will be. It’s more of a Travis thing than anything.”

Hunter gets that look on his face, the open and warm one that makes you want to tell him everything. “I can’t imagine.”

Bryce—the man so rarely affected by anything—blinks a little too hard. He clears his throat. Twice. “So. Uh. Right. A party.” He seems to regain his composure when he wrinkles his nose and asks the room at large, “Does this mean we have to invite Keats?”

“I mean, he’s in the group chat,” I argue.

“Yeah, I noticed. Who the fuck added him?”

Matt knocks on the counter twice, his sign to let us know he wants us to wait for his contribution. He starts to sign before growling in frustration and grabbing his tablet instead. It’s rare these days that he doesn’t know a sign for something, but it still happens. Sometimes his brain feels too full for him to pull them out of his memory. He said once that it feels like quicksand, like he’s flailing to grab them and they just keep slipping through his fingers.

Sometimes I think he and Maison would get along so well.

“Travis added him while they were on this past mission,” his tablet’s half-Russian, half-German abomination tells us. “It made Ace all grumpy because Travis shouldn’t have been able todo that. Travis told him maybe he’s better at technology than Ace is.” Matt grins at us before pressing enter one last time to finish. “Ace stayed awake all night making a new encryption code.”

We all enjoy that, even Hunter chuckling.

“What’s up with Keats anyway?” Hunter asks, taking a chance. He puts his hands up to show he’s fully aware of what kind of chance it is. “Feel free to tell me it’s not my business.”

Bryce sighs heavily. “No one really knows what’s up with Keats, other than he was an operative for his own mission a while ago.”

“Oh, and he’s obsessed with Bryce,” I add. Bryce glares at me. I give him a cheeky grin. “What? Two can play this game, dude.”

He flips me off. “Listen here, you little shit—”

Maison appears in the entryway to the kitchen, causing Bryce to stop mid-sentence. He looks like half a person, his shoulders hunched and his hands hidden in the front pocket of Hunter’s sweatshirt that he stole for the second day in a row. He has the hood up this time. With his head ducked, it’s impossible to see his face.

Dr. Singh stands behind him, his eyes on Hunter. “Can I speak with you for a moment, Hunter?”

“Of course.” Hunter goes to Maison first, ducking his head so he can look at him. I can’t see Maison’s face, but I can see Hunter smile. “There you are, kitten. You okay?”

Maison nods before saying something I can’t quite make out. Whatever it is has Hunter nodding in return. Then he kisses the top of his head and moves around him to Dr. Singh. I don’t let myself wonder about what’s going on, trusting that someone will tell me. For now, I give my friends a pointed look that sends them out of the room without a word, and sit Maison down next to my lemonade. He manages a shaky smile when I nudge it closer to his hand. “It’ll help,” I argue.

He takes a drink, but I don’t think it actually helps at all.

My eyes drift toward the last place I saw Hunter and Dr. Singh, but my attention is brought back when Maison puts his head on the counter, cheek pressed to the marble, and peers up at me to say, “He’s talking to him about the self-harm stuff. He wanted me to pick someone who would check in with me every day. He said he could help give me guidance on it, too. Like as a dom, I guess? But he said he wanted to talk to him alone so he doesn’t feel pressured to agree to stuff in front of me.”

“As if Hunter won’t die and go to Heaven with an offer like that.”

He grins, his cheeks flushing. “Yeah. Yeah, I think he’ll like it a lot.”

"We're pretty lucky we found him, hey?"

His grin softens into something lovesick and beautiful. "Yeah. We really are."

"We're going to have to tell him he's not going anywhere, whether he likes it or not."

"Oh, definitely." Maison winks at me before closing his eyes and sighing. "I've got a gun after all."

Chapter Thirty-Five

Hunter

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